Portable Toilet Graffiti Removal: Why Tag Off Rules Supreme

Derived from the Italian verb, graffiare, which means to scratch, graffiti began as an underground, pop cultural art movement in the late 1970s in New York and Philadelphia.

Its beginnings are credited to two teenagers named Cornbread and Cool Earl, who wrote their names all across Philadelphia in order to mark their respective territories in public places.

Since then, graffiti has grown to become an art form for some, an eyesore for others, and an occasional nuisance for those that own and operate portable sanitation companies. Graffiti on portable toilets is the equivalent of a roach running across a restaurant floor or bad odors in a company restroom — neither does anything for a company’s brand, bottom line or perception.

We recognized long ago that there’s a certain pride PT operators take in their products. A clean, odor-free and graffiti-free portable washroom is a welcomed reflection upon their business, their services and their hard-earned reputation. Conversely, the opposite can be just as true and can even lead to certain legal ramifications which we’ll get into shortly.

So, in addition to creating some of the most effective odor-neutralizing PT products in the global market place, our chemists and technicians set out to create a solution that effectively removes graffiti from the durable plastic polyethylene that portable toilets are made from.

The results of their tenacious efforts created our Tag Off Graffiti Remover, a product that has become the most effective way to remove stubborn paint, marker and other unsightly marks from plastic PT surfaces, but also billboards, bridges, buildings, buses, pavements, road signs, sidewalks, trucks and much more.

Read on as we touch on a brief history of graffiti, the unusual aspects it plays within public restrooms and portable toilets, and how our team created what has become the most effective graffiti removal product for porta-potty operators and any other companies looking to erase unwanted vandalism.

Unusual Aspects Of Public Bathroom And Porta-Potty Graffiti

Apart from the fact that public bathroom and portable toilet graffiti is very difficult to remove and a task best left to the experts at Surco and their Tag Off Graffiti Remover, this type of vandalism is in a category all by itself.

This is because it reflects the uniqueness of the space in which the writing takes place. There’s an odd, almost palpable tension that exists in public bathrooms perhaps because private activities that involve genitals and body functions are being performed in places that are open to everyone.

Public bathrooms are also single gender spaces, which is unusual in modern society and which might also be the reason that research on toilet graffiti, the first of which was conducted by Alfred Kinsey in the 1950s, has focused on the differences between what men and women write in their respective stalls.

Kinsey’s research tapped into the realization that men wrote dirtier things more often than women, who wrote mostly about romantic love.

A 1965 study compiled by folklorist, Alan Dundes, suggested that “a primitive smearing impulse” was the force behind the desire to draw on a bathroom wall. Its anonymity is akin to Internet commentary in forums and blogs. He further stated that: “people who carve or write their names are leaving a memento of themselves which may injure and spoil something beautiful.”

Graffiti in all of its aspects is a reflection of popular culture that creates numerous communities of “like-minded citizens” and portrays stories that can be related to by other graffiti artists or viewers of the graffiti. Societal expectations are meshed between the letters and colors that cover public spaces.

Still, it is usually met with disdain and the need to remove it has stirred the creation of products designed exclusively to do just that, the best of which is our Tag Off Graffiti Remover.

When viewed in a neighborhood from the window of a passing car, graffiti is always seen as a sign that an area is in decline, poverty-stricken and crime-ridden. While this is probably true, the societal label that screams destruction of public property overwhelms any desire to look beyond the brightly colored message expressed with so many diverse patterns.

Whatever graffiti may or may not be, society will always consider it as an unacceptable eyesore that must be removed. Caring municipal leaders call the our professionals or help, as they know that they have all the tools necessary to eliminate graffiti from urban spaces, specifically the Tag Off Graffiti Remover.

The Legal Ramifications Of Not Removing Graffiti

If a company does not remove graffiti from its rented portable toilets, they may well be slapped with a lawsuit, which is exactly what happened in Chicago back in 1998.

A complaint of sexual harassment was raised against Foster Wheeler Construction Inc, citing that racist and sexual graffiti on their construction site was grounds for harassment. The company was found liable and paid out $1,325,000 to 100 former African-American and/or female employees.

Surco Portable Sanitation PT Products And Solutions

Since 1946, we have been a world leader in odor control solutions, providing odor neutralizing porta potty deodorizers, dry toss packets, wash down sprays and other specialties, including the Tag Off Graffiti Remover. With our seventy-plus years of experience, we provide the industry’s best products that can be applied to every portable sanitation situation under the sun.

Our vaporous odor control additives, cleaning products and services far exceed industry standards, and they all reflect our company’s deep and abiding concern for the preservation of the environment and the reduction of our carbon footprint. In this regard, all of our portable toilet deodorizers are user-friendly, formaldehyde-free and come in both liquid and dry packet portable toilet deodorants.

Dedicated to the exploration of innovative and more advanced scientific odor control strategies, our Surco Technology Center and its team of experts are equipped with the latest in gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, head space analysis, distillation, extraction and quality control technology.

All of our manufactured goods are created and manufactured in this ultra modern, 85,000 square-foot Pittsburgh scientific facility. When it comes to important questions relating to the portable sanitation industry, we have all of the answers. We are pioneers in the development and manufacture of 100% safe eco-friendly products.

The Cleansing Power Of Tag Off Graffiti Remover

We recently introduced this new, extremely effective graffiti remover, which works very well when used in conjunction with a Magic Eraser, scrubbing sponge and a power washer. It is the most effective graffiti-related product on the bathroom hygiene market today, and it is designed to eradicate pencil and pen marks from bathroom surfaces that can be up to three years old.

One company, Rent-A-John, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, tried this product and reported back that it removed 99% of the graffiti, some of which was at least three years old, on about 40 portable toilets that had been stored away as unusable due to damage. They hadn’t relinquished use of these portable toilets easily, but discovered that if they rented them out with the graffiti on them, they were returned even more badly defaced with gang graffiti, paint, marker and pencil damage.

Tag Off Graffiti Remover may need some help in the case of markers that have embedded themselves into the plastic, but a Magic Eraser, scrubbing sponge and a power washer applied together never misses their mark (or marks). Psychologically speaking, removing graffiti goes against the desires of vandals who desperately want their images or gang-related symbols to be on view for as long as possible. They aren’t likely to return to a place where “their work” has been removed.

The future of the portable toilet industry is largely dependant on scientific research and technological advances. While there is no predicting what tomorrow may bring, our researchers and industrial scientists are focused on developing more health and environmental benefits to portable restroom users.

It does seem likely that advances in technology and the expansion of knowledge that comes with it will continue to improve the quality of services and products designed to accommodate the portable restroom experience and the dynamic needs and desires of users.

In Conclusion

One thing is certain. Graffiti has numbered days on porta potties at least, as more and more portable toilet companies become informed about the prowess of Surco’s Tag Off Graffiti Remover.

Final thought on graffiti: People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish… but that’s only if it’s done properly.~Banksy, Wall and Piece

Five Tips To Help Prevent Vandalism Of Portable Toilets

There are several courses of action a porta-potty rental company can embrace to prevent graffiti and other forms of vandalism. They are as follows:

Make Sure Porta Potties Are Situated in a Well-Lit Area: Illumination emanating from streetlights and nearby buildings are good deterrents against vandals who prefer doing their destructive thing after the sunsets.

Put Up A Fence Around Construction Site: Fencing off the site perimeter will lock in porta-potties overnight. This will reduce unwanted entrants from tagging restroom interiors with graffiti.

Use Surveillance Cameras: Strategically placing surveillance cameras near portable toilets is a significant deterrent against vandalism of all sorts, including tip-overs, which some miscreants find amusing. It won’t be so funny when they are presented with video evidence of their destruction and it will help in any pending litigation.

Lock Porta Potties Overnight: If fencing off a site with portable toilets isn’t a feasible option, the next best thing is to lock up portable toilets at night. This will serve to close out vandals even if they choose to seek other modes of entry.

Porta-Potty Graffiti: Thousands upon thousands of dollars are spent every year addressing vandalism and the removal of graffiti from portable toilets everywhere.Beyond the issue of aesthetics, when dealing with public places, passersby can and often do associate graffiti messages scrawled on portable toilets as indicators of how the company, whose name is emblazoned on the porta-potty, feels. While this may be both unfair and untrue, it is, nevertheless, a fact.

A Few More Interesting Facts About Graffiti

A 1983 study defines three categories of graffiti; tourist graffiti (Kilroy was here), inner city graffiti, which includes street art, and public and portable bathroom graffiti, which is also known as latrinalia. Our Tag Off Graffiti Remover is used only for the latter.

Graffiti is a form of self-expression, albeit one that is very costly to remove and not highly appreciated by most. Nevertheless, tagging walls with graffiti does serve a societal purpose as a form of communication within shared community spaces.

According to Australian art critic, Stephen Sewell of the Sydney Morning Herald: “While art is the province of the unexpected and the challenging, and likely to provoke incredulity and even rage, popular culture is the domain of the familiar, the mawkish, the sentimental and the trite and bears the same relationship to culture in general as a McDonald’s hamburger does to food.”

What Part Does Graffiti Play In Pop Culture?

There is a much larger message enmeshed in the scribble on the bathroom stalls, walls and sidewalks of urban cities than the brash, bold scrawls that most luridly meet the eye.

Concrete surfaces serve as canvases for the expression of emotions; attitudes; dreams; fears; personality and cultural history. These expressions morph into stories and mirror urban lives.

They can represent a mottled, collective tapestry of social issues or very personal struggles. Street graffiti is usually more aesthetically pleasing than bathroom graffiti text, which often is gritty and reflects attitudes towards gender, sex and race.

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